No More Learning

White fire
Has cloven to the roots yon huge snow-loaded cedar;
How fearfully God's thunder howls behind!

MERCURY:
I must obey his words and thine: alas! _435
Most heavily remorse hangs at my heart!

PANTHEA:
See where the child of Heaven, with winged feet,
Runs down the slanted sunlight of the dawn.

IONE:
Dear sister, close thy plumes over thine eyes
Lest thou behold and die: they come: they come _440
Blackening the birth of day with countless wings,
And hollow underneath, like death.

FIRST FURY:
Prometheus!

SECOND FURY:
Immortal Titan!

THIRD FURY:
Champion of Heaven's slaves!

PROMETHEUS:
He whom some dreadful voice invokes is here,
Prometheus, the chained Titan. Horrible forms, _445
What and who are ye? Never yet there came
Phantasms so foul through monster-teeming Hell
From the all-miscreative brain of Jove;
Whilst I behold such execrable shapes,
Methinks I grow like what I contemplate, _450
And laugh and stare in loathsome sympathy.

FIRST FURY:
We are the ministers of pain, and fear,
And disappointment, and mistrust, and hate,
And clinging crime; and as lean dogs pursue
Through wood and lake some struck and sobbing fawn, _455
We track all things that weep, and bleed, and live,
When the great King betrays them to our will.

PROMETHEUS:
Oh! many fearful natures in one name,
I know ye; and these lakes and echoes know
The darkness and the clangour of your wings. _460
But why more hideous than your loathed selves
Gather ye up in legions from the deep?
SECOND FURY:
We knew not that: Sisters, rejoice, rejoice!

PROMETHEUS:
Can aught exult in its deformity?

SECOND FURY:
The beauty of delight makes lovers glad, _465
Gazing on one another: so are we.
As from the rose which the pale priestess kneels
To gather for her festal crown of flowers
The aereal crimson falls, flushing her cheek,
So from our victim's destined agony _470
The shade which is our form invests us round,
Else we are shapeless as our mother Night.

PROMETHEUS:
I laugh your power, and his who sent you here,
To lowest scorn. Pour forth the cup of pain.

FIRST FURY:
Thou thinkest we will rend thee bone from bone, _475
And nerve from nerve, working like fire within?

PROMETHEUS:
Pain is my element, as hate is thine;
Ye rend me now; I care not.

SECOND FURY:
Dost imagine
We will but laugh into thy lidless eyes?

PROMETHEUS:
I weigh not what ye do, but what ye suffer, _480
Being evil. Cruel was the power which called
You, or aught else so wretched, into light.

THIRD FURY:
Thou think'st we will live through thee, one by one,
Like animal life, and though we can obscure not
The soul which burns within, that we will dwell _485
Beside it, like a vain loud multitude
Vexing the self-content of wisest men:
That we will be dread thought beneath thy brain,
And foul desire round thine astonished heart,
And blood within thy labyrinthine veins _490
Crawling like agony?

PROMETHEUS:
Why, ye are thus now;
Yet am I king over myself, and rule
The torturing and conflicting throngs within,
As Jove rules you when Hell grows mutinous.

CHORUS OF FURIES:
From the ends of the earth, from the ends of the earth, _495
Where the night has its grave and the morning its birth,
Come, come, come!
Oh, ye who shake hills with the scream of your mirth,
When cities sink howling in ruin; and ye
Who with wingless footsteps trample the sea, _500
And close upon Shipwreck and Famine's track,
Sit chattering with joy on the foodless wreck;
Come, come, come!
Leave the bed, low, cold, and red,
Strewed beneath a nation dead; _505
Leave the hatred, as in ashes
Fire is left for future burning:
It will burst in bloodier flashes
When ye stir it, soon returning:
Leave the self-contempt implanted _510
In young spirits, sense-enchanted,
Misery's yet unkindled fuel:
Leave Hell's secrets half unchanted
To the maniac dreamer; cruel
More than ye can be with hate _515
Is he with fear.